Allergies and ASD

[FanjoForTheMankySocks]

Hello everyone, hope you had a lovely Xmas.

We did (apart from usual inlaw comments)

DD gave us a scare on Tuesday as she had a bad allergic reaction where her face and eyes swelled up , and she had to go to A and E. She had hives all over when we were away, and her eyes swelled up when we were eating out recently.

She also has eczema quite badly.

What I am wondering is is there any chance this is somehow connected to/making her ASD symptoms worse. Has anyone any experience of this?

She has been referred for allergy testing.

We haven't tried GF/CF diet, although she has had spells where she has been ill and had no gluten for a week and it has made no difference (she always likes her milk though)!

TIA.

noone?

DS1 suffers a lot with various allergies and his behaviour are understandably a lot worse when he's having allergy flairs or attacks. It doesn't help that some antihistamines put him in a vile mood.

A gluten free diet can take 6 months for the results to become truly apparent as it takes that long to get rid of any gluten in the system and for the gut to heal itself. My DS2 is asd and is also allergic to latex. That's not too bad, it's MY allergies that take the piss get really annoying, I'm allergic to hundreds of different things (evilly allergic too, antihistimine tabs don't help, I have to get injections). I'm allergic to: scorbic acid, which is used as a preservative in lots of foods, magnesium stearate which they use as a binder in MOST medicines (which is great fun as I have to take epilepsy meds), penicillin, amoxycillin and erythmoricin could kill me. GOD allergies are pants. I would advise trying a GF diet for a longer period though.

Thanks, will do some reading about it

I'm convinced that DS2's allergies are part and parcel of his autism. We didn't see any dramatic immediate changes when we took him off gluten (he's been dairy-free since infancy), but gradually his sleep patterns and his bowels improved. His eczema has improved hugely and his asthma is now under control. He has been on a programme of supplements as well to which I credit much of the progress. We also restrict several other foods and he doesn't have MSG or aspartame and as few additives as possible.

It's hard to say about his autism - we've done various other therapies with him (mainly ABA and floortime) which have been very beneficial - but he is far less stimmy and more engaged than he used to be. He has SLD, which means that he struggles with speech and other cognitive skills, but if his autism can be separated from his learning difficulties then it is fairly mild. He's calm, adaptable, affectionate and very 'unautistic' in many ways.

I'd forgotten about aspartame , I eliminated it from ALL of our diet about 3 years ago, as it's a neurotoxin and was making mine & DD's epilepsy worse. EVIL STUFF should be banned from food.

sphil

really interesting to read the progress you have made.

what supplements do you use and how did you know what to use? also what other foods have you cut out?

thank you

In our family there seems to be a link between casein intolerance causing weight gain problems in forst threemonths and later dx of an ASD- though whereaboput the child is on the spectrum has varied.

Not having the intol doesn't seem to be an all clear but is diffenece between SEN (ds2,dyspraxia ish) and SN (ds1 and ds3,awaiting development of toddler ds4 who has the intol tosee if it holds true).We've followed this back a few generations.

Can't say what the causality is though- does the asd cause the allergy, or the allergy the asd?

From my own perspective, if I drink milk of any gform (less so with goats but not fully clear) I bcomevery withdrawn and experience that sense of atching the world go by through soundproof glass people describe.
I spent most of my childhood like that,which is no doubt partly why i've had to go back and do things like my education again.

GF workedfor us but had to be abandoned because he has ED and the food focus was making him very ill; definitely worth a try though.We're starting anew the diest thing as ds2seems tobe showing signs of add linked to foodstuffs sohere we go again LOL....

DD is totally addicted to milk, so that is probably the first thing I should think about cutting out.

DS2 takes:
cod liver oil
Body Balance Bio Oil (sunflower and flaxseed)
Vitamin A
Magnesium carbonate
Saccromyces boulardii (anti-yeast)
Bifido Bac T (probiotic)
folinic acid
Vitamin C

He doesn't eat citrus fruits, eggs, tomatoes, nuts and seeds, as well as dairy, gluten and the additives mentioned above. Some of these things we removed when he was a toddler because they appeared to make his eczema worse, but I have no idea whether he's still intolerant to them.

The particular supplements and amounts have been changed often over the last three years, under the guidance of a nutritionist who believes that the most important thing is to strengthen and 'mature' DS2's immune system.

I'm still not sure about it all tbh - and it's bloody expensive - but there's no doubt that his physical condition has improved, though he's still very pale at times and has huge dark circles under his eyes which I know can be signs of food intolerance, so I don't think we've got it quite right yet. The trouble is, I'm too scared to stop it now. On the few occasions that he hasn't taken them for a few days, we have noticed some differences, but those times have usually been when we've been away, so things have been different anyway, which could have caused the changes in him... The trouble is, it's impossible to PROVE that one thing or another is helping.

We are looking into allergy testing atm to see whether we can reintroduce some of the foods we've banned - I'd really like to expand his diet and this, to me, has been the real downside of all the dietary stuff we've done - that it's made his diet even narrower than it would have been anyway. Of course, reintroducing stuff isn't easy - he is very suspicious of anything 'new' and doesn't appear to remember that he loved satsumas when he was a toddler

thank you